


Conflagration

by headtripparade



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alexandria Safe-Zone, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Awkwardness, Beth Lives, Bethyl Week, F/M, Hopeful Ending, One Shot, Prompt Fic, Return, Reunions, The Hilltop (Walking Dead)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-28
Updated: 2017-02-28
Packaged: 2018-09-27 10:32:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10011602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/headtripparade/pseuds/headtripparade
Summary: She didn't ask for any of this.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So here is my contribution for the "return" prompt for Bethyl Week. It is my first fic in general in well over a year (rust like whoa) and my first TWD/Bethyl fic ever, so try to be kind. I was petrified to write this because I was worried I wouldn't be able to do these characters any sort of justice, but I figured the best way to conquer my fear was to just break the seal with a pretty generic reunion oneshot. :)
> 
> Enjoy.

Her lungs burned. 

She was certain the molecules she choked to breathe in were on actual fire and she found herself powerless to extinguish them as her insides incinerated with every shaky breath. She closed her eyes and tried to reconcile the flaming weight bearing down on her, but it wouldn’t stop. _He_  wouldn’t stop.

He was invading her space; her sanity. Sure, he’d awkwardly stopped himself a good ten feet from her, but who was he to think that was okay? She hadn’t asked for any of this. 

Beth Greene hadn’t asked to wake up cold and confused in a stale hospital bed, nor had she asked to almost get killed at least a dozen more times as she fought northward some 600-odd miles to track down the family she wasn’t even sure was alive. She didn’t ask for it to take nearly two years. 

She didn’t ask for her scarred body to completely falter and slump into a heap of Jell-O at the sight of him.

They’d whisked him away, of course. She could vaguely make out Rick muttering something along the lines “let me talk to her first” as he led him down the street. Perhaps it was exhaustion or maybe dehydration, but she’d struggled to stay conscious as her blue eyes followed his jarred gaze further and further away.

Someone had gotten her a glass of water. Someone else had helped her to her feet. A third someone led her to a house where she was shown the shower and ordered to wait for Rick. She’d spoken to him, the overtly fine furnishings of the home tearing her between a long forgotten comfort and devastating _dis_ comfort as she did so.

He’d not wanted to bombard her, but she was thirsty for the knowledge of everything she’d missed. It’d taken her frazzled head a while to put pieces of her fragile puzzle together on its own, and _fuck it all_ , she wasn’t going to let him off so easily. He told her about Glenn’s brutal murder; that Maggie had given birth and was leading a neighboring community. 

He talked about the war she’d missed, but that war seemed childish when paired against the inferno burning in her chest she felt now as Daryl Dixon planted his feet on the same porch as her. 

She’d come out here to process--to breathe--and he took that away from her. 

He took her _ability_  to do either away from her.

Her fingers unconsciously worked their way up to her shoulder length hair and furiously twisted the damp waves--a habit she’d picked up as a result of waking up with a shorn head and needing to feel herself returning to some semblance of normal as her locks regrew. She closed her eyes, sucking in a painfully searing breath. 

She wished she knew what to say; what to do. 

Fuck, she wished she knew what to _feel_.

Once she’d added his piece-- _their piece_ \--back into her puzzle, she wrestled everyday with the notion that he was likely dead. Sure, she’d deemed him the last man standing. She’d had hope for him at one point that he would beat everything around him, but who was she kidding? She was living, fire breathing proof that everything died. Even Daryl Dixon.

So she mourned him. She cried for him even though she didn’t cry anymore. She laid on the hard ground in the woods, sometimes mere feet from camp-mates and sometimes alone, and fucked herself to the point of tears as she imagined his rough hands sliding tortuously up and down her quivering body. 

The soft clearing of his throat cut through her thoughts like a rabid animal’s jaw, thrusting her back into this reality in which she had no control and minimal perception. 

She opened her eyes, blinking at him as she continued to twist her split ends around her calloused finger. He was just as strong as she remembered, though he looked probably ten years older than he was. His eyes were sunken into black holes and his face seemed puffier. The scruff on his chin was nearly all gray. His hair was longer than she’d ever seen it, hanging freely over his face. 

He looked aged; beaten. And yet... he’d carried his world on his back and he was still boyish; _so beautiful._

She sighed.

“Are you ever gonna say something?”

Trepidation coursed through her as she spoke, watching him shrug shyly and turn his gaze downward to his feet. 

“Don’t know what to say.”

She bit her lip anxiously and squinted out the glaring sunlight as it washed angrily over her sunburned arms. 

“You could ask me how the hell I’m here.”

He shrugged again, lifting his his eyes to hers.

“It don’t matter how.”

She looked down to her lap, finally disentangling her finger from her hair to wipe her chewed lip when tasted the ever familiar metallic burst that accompanied blood. 

“Daryl--”

“Rick said he’s taking you to Hilltop in the morning.”

She nodded slowly.

“I need to see Maggie.”

He smirked ever so slightly--ever so awkwardly--and brought his thumb up to his lip.

“Kid’s pretty cute.”

She smirked back, sadly.

“I can’t wait to meet him. Do you ever see them?”

“I try to go up at least once a month. Check in on things.” She narrowed her focus on him. There was a sadness to his answer she couldn’t decipher. He shrugged, turning his tired eyes to a smiling middle-aged couple walking down the street. “Least I can do. Boy needs someone to look out for him. Maggie needs to know she ain’t in it alone.”

Of course he did. Because he was Daryl. He was Daryl and Maggie and baby Hershel were his family; they were _their_  family. 

She couldn’t fathom how she thought for two seconds that he’d be dead or anywhere other than taking care of them. She’d called it right the first time--he was going to be the last man standing, he just had to have something to stand for. 

She smiled.

“Are you coming with us tomorrow?”

He rolled his shoulders, a mumble the likes of which she thought she’d never hear again growling sweetly past his lips. 

“I’unno.”

Her smile grew and she was so fucking sure she had not smiled so brightly since the two of them were together all those years ago. 

“Don’t _I’unno_.”

He didn’t smirk. He didn’t smile. He didn’t laugh. 

“Ain’t nowhere else I’d be, Greene.”

His face remained stoic, but his eyes were blazing. She’d been unsure how to react to him, what to say, or how to feel. Nerves had eaten her alive throughout this brief exchange and yet this--his eyes burning into her with the same heat as was scorching her lungs only moments before-- _this_  gave her a renewed hope that maybe, maybe, they could get back to their space.

She could tell him her story; he could tell her his.

They could finally throw their arms around each other and hold on as if there wasn’t going to be a tomorrow.

They could rebuild their tumbled fortress even stronger and perhaps bigger than it was before. 

They could have each other.

They could make it.

They could _live_.


End file.
